The Diary of Niels: Affective engagement through tangible interaction with museum artifacts
This study addresses the challenge of integrating interactive technologies into museum exhibitions for visitors, aiming to enhance engagement with historical artifacts.
This paper explores the use of tangible interactions to integrate technology into a historical house museum without distracting from artifacts. The developed installation, "The Diary of Niels," uses physical objects, RFID sensors, and a narrative to increase visitor engagement and introduce them to the exhibition's theme and artifact meaning.
This paper presents a research through design exploration using tangible interactions in order to seamlessly integrate technology in a historical house museum. The study addresses a longstanding concern in museum exhibition design that interactive technologies may distract from the artifacts on display. Through an iterative design process including user studies, a co-creation workshop with museum staff and several prototypes, we developed an interactive installation called The Diary of Niels that combines physical objects, RFID sensors and an elaborate fiction in order to facilitate increased visitor engagement. Insights from the research process and user tests indicate that the integration of technology and artifacts is meaningful and engaging for users, and helps introduce museum visitors to the historic theme of the exhibition and the meaning of the artifacts. The study also points to continued challenges in integrating such hybrid experiences fully with the rest of the exhibition.